Please note that this is an outdated install instruction, the latest version can be found here

This mail-server setup is based on Postfix from Wietse Venema and the Dovecot IMAP and POP3 server. Parts of this mail-server are already included in the standard installation of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, like postfix and dovecot, but it lacks some important features. For instance, if you want to receive mail from more than one user on different (virtual) domains.

To do that you need some more extensions and added features to de-couple the Postfix user management from the OS X user management, add some virtual domain handling, enable the users to send the mail securely over SSL and don’t open the server for abuse. To be able to do this you need to compile our own version Postfix with support for MySQL (user management), dovecot SASL (authentication), TLS (SSL) and use Dovecot IMAP (virtual mailboxes) or use POP3 to have people download the messages from their mailbox.

Building the components on Snow Leopard:

With this setup you can provide email services for friends and family with their own domains and email addresses and without to give them a user account on your machine.

Now everything is compiled and configured it is time to start everything up and to test if it is working properly. This step also takes care of having everything start-up automatically after a reboot. As a last step some tips to be able to see if everything really works.